My Husband's Wives (8 page)

‘This is my daughter, Nicola,' Kate said, her voice was soft in spite of the tight grip she maintained on her hand, but the child remained statue-still.

‘Hello Nicola, you are just like your mummy, so pretty.' Annalise thought she caught a quivering smile, but her overwhelming sense was of detachment in the child's face. ‘If only boys were as well-behaved,' she said, standing again. Even if she had a natural jelly in her handbag, she had a feeling the child wouldn't be allowed it. Kate had always been very diet-conscious.

‘Well, of all the days to meet you here.' Kate took stock of her. Annalise was grateful she'd managed to change into smart shoes and her nice coat; she could have been in jog pants and a hoodie. ‘We're having a fundraiser tonight.' Kate nodded back towards the hospital.

‘Here?' Annalise couldn't quite manage to take the surprise out of her voice. Nowhere in the world felt less party-like than the emergency ward.

‘No.' She shook her head, took a deep breath and, as though speaking to a six-year-old, ‘We're raising funds for the hospital. I'm on the board. We're trying to get an assessment unit for children.' She nodded down towards the child beside her. She was lovely, a miniature version of her diminutive mother. She had the same clear skin, dark hair, perfect features, but eyes that continued to stare somewhat unnervingly at Annalise. ‘Nicola has autism,' Kate said the words gently; it was as much an explanation as an introduction.

‘I'm sorry,' Annalise said and then had a feeling that she should have said something else.

‘It's…' Kate took a deep breath, ‘it is what it is, thank you though; I'm sure you mean well.' She ran her perfectly manicured hand gently across the child's glossy hair, then fixed her gaze on Annalise. ‘You have two children, don't you?'

‘Yes, holy terrors.' She was delighted to get back to home ground, at least something she could talk about with some degree of confidence.

‘Both healthy?' It almost felt as though Kate was setting up some kind of trap for her. Of course, that was the good thing about being Annalise; she didn't have to pretend she even noticed, mostly she actually didn't.

‘Yes. All healthy and happy.'

‘That's good. You'll support us to fundraise, won't you? Can't put a price on having a health service you can rely on. You can bring that mysterious Paul Starr with you. It's as if he's kidnapped you; no one sees you since you married him.' She wrote the details of the hotel and time down on a small card for Annalise, and made her promise she'd be there. ‘We need all the help we can get the way things are these days.'

‘I'm not sure.' Annalise wanted to pull out her chequebook and write out an astronomically large amount in favour of the hospital. The only thing stopping her, of course, was the saucepan sitting smack bang on the top of her handbag. If it had been one of her better ones, then perhaps…

‘Listen, it's not just about the money,' Kate always seemed to be able to read people, ‘you're still good for the press. They love you, especially after that piece you did when you were pregnant. Most of the other girls wouldn't have been seen dead in public if they were that fat.'

‘I wasn't fat…'

‘Yes,
we
know that.' Kate leaned in closer, as though they were best friends sharing some secret that no one else was in on. ‘Anyway, isn't it time you got back out on the scene again? You can't hide away forever. Who's to say? You might even enjoy getting your picture in the papers again.' Then she was gone, striding purposefully away, the little girl keeping up her pace awkwardly at her side. Autism. Annalise thought about it for a moment. She was luckier than she'd realized.

It actually turned out to be a good day. Madeline made them all a lovely casserole and stayed at her house for most of the afternoon. Annalise spent two hours channel hopping between Jerry Springer and Fashion TV while Madeline took the boys to the local park. ‘It's been an horrendous experience for you, dear.' Madeline popped the offending saucepan in the dishwasher. Annalise put the card from Kate on the mantelpiece but then took it down. It proved too distracting up there. It was a very nice card, exactly what she'd expect Kate to have designed for herself. It contained little more than her name and contact details. A narrow line of text at the bottom of the card announced that she was a P.R. consultant. Sometimes it seemed to Annalise that everyone had a career but her. Even the supers were still modelling, and god knows they were as ancient as Methuselah.

Paul worked so hard and it wasn't, as she'd told him so often, as if he needed to. Paul just loved his job, she supposed. They could easily have lived on her allowance. Her father had given them the mock-Georgian house they lived in as a wedding gift. Maybe it wasn't Paul's scene, but they had a boyband singer next door and a celebrity chef at the other end of the row. Annalise thought it was perfect; if it was ostentatious, she didn't notice. Each year her dad presented her with a new car. The latest had to have cost the guts of a hundred grand – and she loved it. ‘Company car,' he told her proudly. ‘Just take care of my grandchildren; that's work enough for you to be worrying your lovely head about.' Her dad was the best. He'd come up from the country with little more than the shirt on his back, and within a few years of meeting and marrying Madeline Divine they'd managed to build up a car sales empire that had sewn up half the dealerships up and down the country. In some ways, Paul was similar to her dad; work meant something more than just money at the end of the week. Like her dad, he too wanted to look after her and spoil her. Annalise began to feel uneasy. Did she want to be married to her dad? Sometimes she thought back to their first meeting; Paul might have been in an empty marriage, but there was no mistaking he was very proud of his successful artist wife. Annalise hadn't been successful at anything in her life, the one shot she had at it, she messed it up spectacularly.

‘Anyway,' Paul told her when she mentioned he worked so hard, ‘I have other commitments, remember.'

‘Of course I remember,' she'd said, but she never wanted to think about Grace Kennedy or Delilah. That time was over for Paul. Mostly Annalise convinced herself that he'd probably never really loved Grace Kennedy at all. He loved Annalise, she was sure of that. He let her have everything she wanted, never put pressure on her. When she realised she was pregnant with Jerome, he'd been over the moon, and there had been no looking back. Life had turned out well for Annalise; she was married to a man who adored her with two kids that were the centre of her life. What more could any of them want?

*

‘Long day?' Annalise kissed Paul lightly as he discarded his coat. The boys were in their pyjamas, fed and washed, there was not a soggy cornflake left on any of them. She handed Paul a tall glass of gin and tonic when he walked in to the sitting room. He slumped into the leather chair that she'd ordered especially for him for Valentine's Day. ‘Fancy hitting the town with me tonight?'

‘I didn't think we hit the town anymore?'

‘Well, normally we don't, but…' She explained about Kate, Nicola, and fundraising for the hospital. She was as excited as if she was off to her first teenage disco.

‘You go; I'll stay here with the boys.'

‘I've organised a babysitter; she'll do everything. Really, I'd love you to come.' Sabine worked in the beautician's. She was a whizz with make-up, hair and false nails. For an extra fifty, she'd promised to mind the boys. There was no time for waxing, not properly anyway. It meant Annalise's skirt would have to be long, so she'd borrowed an Ellie Saab 1970s-inspired gown in a nude chiffon fabric from Madeline's wardrobe. She could easily sashay into her old life dressed like this. Annalise would be picture-perfect by eight o'clock.

‘Honey, I'm just too wrecked. But you go have fun.' Sometimes Paul could be such an old man. Well, she thought as she headed out the door, she would have fun, even if she was nervous as hell having to go alone.

The ticket for the night cost seven hundred euros. For that, Annalise was stuck beside a doddery old man who was some kind of head doctor, but seemed to have an inordinate interest in her boobs. The real fun had been on arrival. The party was in one of Dublin's tiger hotels. The foyer was cut in two. One side, the smaller, held back a throng of people – the non-celebs and a couple of photographers. She stopped for a chat with a reporter or two, bringing them up to date on her busy lifestyle, telling them about her dress and shoes. ‘This old thing…' She'd loved it, for the few minutes it had lasted, and realized, she missed it.

Once inside the main ballroom, she had floated about. The room was a sea of mint organza, swirled from each table to the ceiling; an abundance of candles added not only ambience, but old-fashioned warmth too. Annalise felt a vaguely nervous sensation in her stomach, as though something fabulous might come of the night. It wasn't all doctors and businessmen either. Before the meal, she bumped into a few people she knew from her modelling days. They were delighted to see her, but there hadn't been much to say beyond the initial catch-up. One of the advertising people asked if she was still modelling – not that he'd offered her anything, but at least he'd asked.

‘Oh, I took a bit of a sabbatical.' She'd heard Madonna use the word once, had waited this long to use it. ‘I'm thinking about going back, maybe, I dunno, branching out a bit; I quite fancy media.' It was the champagne; she'd never been much of a drinker. The stuff sent her doolally too quickly; she put it down to her drug-addict birth mother. The night, because of the drink or not, was magical. She left as the dancing was finishing up. She travelled home, slightly tipsy and full of newfound enthusiasm for the possibilities that life might still hold for her. She could have a career. Like Kate, a consultant. Like Kate Middleton? Okay, so maybe becoming a duchess might be a little off the radar, but she could be every bit the bloody success as that Grace Kennedy.

The next morning it seemed that the grey clouds that had been hanging over Dublin for longer than she wanted to admit had cleared back a little. The sun shone gentle but tentative rays through her bedroom window. As Annalise drank her cup of herbal tea, she felt an optimism; difficult to articulate, but something she had to take action on. She dropped the boys off at their nursery and stopped off at the newsagents, picked up the morning papers, and a skinny latte. If she were in Los Angeles, she'd be having frozen yoghurt, she told herself ruefully. And there she was. Front page of the
Mail
; page three of the
Independent
. In her modelling heyday, she'd have been delighted to get a front page. She would have bagged a couple of gigs just on the back of the
Independent
coverage. Only classy girls got into the broadsheets. It was the dress. She looked almost, well, dare she say it? Regal. The celebrity gossip sites were the same; they were all her friends today. Two hours later, as she parked outside the nursery, she felt as though she were a new person. That lingering insipid feeling that she was losing herself was dissipating slightly. If not her old self, then maybe a better, mature version of that self was within easy grasp today. Question was, would she be brave enough to reach out and grab it?

She hooked up with Gail Rosenstock later that day, organized to meet her in town before the week was out. ‘Oh, you're quite the comeback kid,' Gail said when she rang. To be truthful, Annalise had been nervous about ringing her, but as Gail herself had always said, ‘if you don't ask, you don't get.' And it wasn't as though she'd actually given up the modelling, it was more that it had given up on her for a while or at least that's the way it felt. The phone had just stopped ringing.

Still bolstered up by the night before, she set about making spaghetti bolognaise. It was her signature dish (her only dish that didn't include ingredients from foil-wrapped packets). She couldn't wait to tell Paul about her plans. She wanted him to be proud of her, the way he'd been of Grace Kennedy – the woman whose art still hung on his walls.

‘I'm worried about you,' he'd said to her only last week. ‘It's as though the light is going out in you.' At the time, she thought maybe she had a touch of PMT.

‘I'm fine.' But she liked that he was worried about her. She liked that he was there to look after her, although, she had to admit, he seemed to be there less and less these days.

‘Pressure at work, poppet,' he said, rubbing his finger under her chin, just as her father had done when she was a little girl. Sometimes she loved the way he spoke to her, sometimes, though, it really annoyed her, the way he talked as though she was his daughter, not his wife. Once she almost said it, pointed out that he already had one daughter, but they never spoke about Delilah and she didn't want to talk about Grace anymore than he did.

Friday eventually arrived. She was meeting Gail Rosenstock at Café en Seine for lunch at twelve thirty. She wore her white Ralph Lauren trousers suit – a present from Paul for Jerome's christening. She'd seen it in a shoot in
Vogue
. She'd never had the chance to model for
Vogue
. She corrected herself as she zipped up her pants –
so far
.
Vogue
loved a comeback girl. Marianne Faithfull and Helen Mirren must have featured a hundred times between them and they must be as old as the Virgin Mary, and not nearly as virtuous. Annalise arrived with five minutes to spare, just enough time to check her make-up. It was unfortunate that she'd decided to use the bathrooms, because it was on her return that she met Susan Lyndsey.

In the beginning, Annalise had squarely laid the blame for her ruined career on Susan Lyndsey. After the Titanic incident, she'd attended a shrink for almost eight months, going over the same ground, three times a week. Her father would have paid for more, but the therapist assured him he was being more than generous. Mind you, he gave him a great deal on a convertible Mercedes, which otherwise, let's face it, the guy wouldn't have come within a stiletto's sole of. As far as Annalise was concerned, the loss of the Miss Ireland title had made her career as uncertain as Kate Moss's had been after her cocaine debacle. At least Mossie got the cool badge from hers. There is nothing fashionable about being Miss Ireland and it is even worse if they say they don't want you anymore. The only thing less hip is being in Riverdance – as a male chorus dancer.